Unemployment Data – December 2010

The unemployment figures for December 2010 were recently released for both Canada and the USA. Simple summary: Canada no change at 7.6% and for the USA a decline from 9.8% to 9.4%. Here’s the data for both countries for 2010 showing the rates for each month and the change from January to December:

Here’s the long term chart for Canada (going back to the beginning of 1976):

And a shorter term chart for Canada (since January of 2008 – prior to the start of the recession).

It’s quite noticeable that despite the improvement, unemployment is coming down much more slowly than it went up.

And here’s the graph comparing Canada and the USA from January 2000.

All figures are based on officially reported unemployment rates, which as always are open to some dispute.